I cut back a lot of lower leaves and extra shoots that were popping up with the cascades. I have no idea how they can be producing hops already. Saw sine kind of bugs on the leaves today so I sprayed with insecticidal soap.

Here's one of my cascade pushing 8' already, my centennial are only at about 4-5' , all are in their second year and Chicago has been quite cold all spring, they really didn't break ground until early-mid April!

Wow, I'm jealous! This is the first year for me and my cascade just broke ground about 2 weeks ago. It was a snowy Spring this year in the Denver area, so maybe that had something to do with it or maybe it's just that it's the first year. I'm not looking for anything in terms of harvest this year, so it'll be interesting to see what they do this year and compare them to next year.

Logged

Jeremy Baker

"An escalator can never break: it can only become stairs. You should never see an Escalator Temporarily Out Of Order sign, just Escalator Temporarily Stairs. Sorry for the convenience." - Mitch Hedberg

You should probably identify the bugs before you start spraying with soap. There are beneficial bugs too

They are almost visible in one of the pictures. They had white wings and black body:

Total shot in the dark on that picture but it kind of looks like the wasps that kill aphids. If that is the case, then the good news is that the wasps are helping kill the aphids. The bad news is that you have aphids. If you good wasp and aphid together you'll find more info about the wasps.

I have been spraying neem oil diluted in water on my vegetable and hop plants getting attacked by aphids. So far it seems to temporarily scare off the (good) wasps and lady bugs but scares the aphids off for a long time. The predators will return but the aphids come back in fewer numbers. So that seems to be working ok.

That's great !!!!! I grow hops in containers ( very large containers btw ). My Chinook which I never even brought inside over the winter I just followed the cover with hay method most ground growers utilize and my Chinook plant here in upstate NY is over 17 feet tall already !!!! just starting to grow "cones" you know those little shoots that are fuzzy at the end. I can't believe how fast it took off this year. My EKG and Cascade are following suit with your at about 7-9 feet. Great job with your hops keep up the good work and you'll be rewarded soon enough.